Thursday, 11 July 2013

ASHES, DAY ONE

Fail to prepare and
prepare to, um, have moderate success...

Australia
have kept everyone guessing this tour. First they picked a red herring as coach
– very fishy – then they select players who they’d first sent to the Home
Counties Premier League to prepare. Ashton Agar counted Adam Dobb, Alex Chalker
and Steven Snell among his victims for Henley,
and recovered well from a full bunger first up to show encouraging signs. Such
as not yipping up.

Meanwhile, a guy they originally picked to open the batting
with Ed Cowan – who, naturally, is now at three – was sent to Zimbabwe (where
else?) for a warm-up match, much to the chagrin of the bijou Nottingham
hostelry to be found at 11-15 Friar Lane (rhymes with talkabout). Presumably Warner will be back in time for the Lord’s
Test – he has to cut the ribbon on his stand, after all.

Body talk

England’s
initial batting efforts were marked by both Root and Trott’s serenely positive
footwork and general movement at the crease, in contrast to Cook’s tentative
hanging back. This was Greg Chappell’s thing: positive movement leads to
positive thoughts (more so than the other way around). The England skipper
seemed overly concerned by some early swing batted as though trying not to get
out lbw. Root, we know, gets back and forward in the crease and plays the ball
under his eyes. His first 16 runs were all run down to third man. It was
classical opening batsmanship and no doubt educed a purr of appreciation from
Sir Geoffrey of Boycottshire up in the TMS box, possibly even his first orgasm
since the undredth undred.
Impressive, right up until he got out.

Trott, meanwhile, might walk out all flubberdy-dubberdy,
like a youth team ice hockey goalkeeper, but he looked the most assertive of
the lot, transferring his weight and stepping lithely into whatever was thrown
at him, footwork precise and crisp, caressing the ball on the top of the
bounce, frequently with a crunching sound off the blade. To be bowled chopping
on to an innocuous length ball was, understandably, annoying and his mock swipe
at the stumps suggested as much. Still no Test fifty at TrentBridge,
but his form looks promising.

Siddler on the Roof

Truth be told, none of Australia’s
seamers were at their best in the morning session, with England picking off 18 boundaries
in 24 overs. Pattinson’s bumper-wide to start proceedings – after the
interminable and overblown pomp – invited the predictable quipped observations
that it bore some sort of cosmic significance and had “set the tone” not only
for the series (if anything had set the tone, it was those quips), but also the
EU debt crisis, the second wave of the Arab Spring, and the implementation of
the Kyoto protocol.

Mitchell Starc, meanwhile, was forced to bowl in plimsolls
so as not to create rough for Swann, the significance of which the English
media may slightly have overstated (it being well known that it is absolute
suicide for any left-arm seamer to play against is ever again).

The other Dandenongian, Peter Siddle, recovered from a
frankly dross first spell of 4-0-27-0 to show his usual blue-collar honesty and
bag a ‘Michelle’. He may have been slightly fortuitous to have yorked Root with
his first ball back (surely no-one intentionally bowls a yorker first up), but
swung a couple at KP – who is contractually obliged to feel bat on ball – to
nick him off, then did the same to Bell, before the drag-on of Trott. But the
big gimme was Matt Prior, toeing a wide nothing ball to short point, the low
point of a callow England
batting display. Five-fer, under par.

Broad shoulders?

There was, it seemed, a distinct and pre-meditated plan to
get stuck into Broad. While the green-and-gold-clad Fanatics in the Parr Stand
regaled the hometown boy with the Aerosmith classic ‘Dude Looks Like a Lady’,
Starc and Pattinson wasted no opportunity to bounce him and generally show
aggressive body language. Both hit him on the body – Starc’s early blow that
glanced off his back for four also bringing Haddin up to within earshot for a
spot of advice; Pattinson’s blow on the shoulder preventing him from taking the
field – and it’s fair to say he can expect a bit more, um, cock-measuring as
the summer goes on.

Anyway, after a couple of impressive punched fours off the
back foot, Pattinson, persevering with the short stuff, changed the angle and
it paid immediate dividends with a clothed pull offering a simple return catch.
Given that this was a docile surface, Broad can thus expect several more such
examinations. You could of course have told all this is soon as the first ball
of the series was bowled.

Finn does surprise

When you’re rolled inside 60 overs on the opening day of the
Ashes, you need something, someone to
spark you off. Step forward – with rather a large stride – Steven Finn, opening
the bowling in the absence of Broad (how Cook must have been thankful that
Bresnan wasn’t his third seamer). Things didn’t start so auspiciously – Watto
crunching boundaries off front and back foot from his first two balls – but the
first two balls of Finn’s second over went rather better, Watson and Ed Cowan
offering catches in the cordon.

Of course, a certain amount of synchronicity between the
timing of England’s
opening burst and the peak in a day of lager consumption helped whip
TrentBridge into a cauldron of noise – good natured and witty noise, too, it has
to be said. Anderson then castled the now-mature Australian skipper, ‘Dog’
(formerly known as 'Pup'), with a ball that, had he told him he was going to
bowl it, he still wouldn’t have been able to play, before trapping Rogers, lbw
b DhaRmaSena.

Steven Peter Deveraux
Smith

“Hi, I’m Steve Smith.”

“Steve? Smith?”

“Yeah.”

“And what do you do, ‘Steve Smith’?”

“I play cricket for Straylya.”

“Do you now. Batter or bowler?”

“Well, I used to be a bowler, a leggie–”

“Why ‘used to be’?”

“Dunno. Just… Dunno. Couldn’t really land it.”

“Oh.”

“Or spin it.”

“Oh. So now you’re a batter?”

“Yeah.”

“How’s that working out?”

“Well, I probably still need to tighten up a bit, maybe not
have so many moving parts, but the selectors have told me: ‘Look mate, we’ve got
a bit of a batting drought, so even though you wouldna come within a Nullarbor
of the side six years ago we’re gonna have to give you a run’. So, I’m pretty
stoked.”